


It’s not always romantic, Dean.

by tshmarie



Category: Supernatural
Genre: (it’s the Winchesters, Gen, I Don't Even Know, Light Angst, Platonic Soulmates, References to Canon, Season/Series 01, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, what do you expect?)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 06:47:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29431944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tshmarie/pseuds/tshmarie
Summary: Dean and Sam are soulmates. Sam has to convince Dean that’s actually ok.No wincest. Takes place during season 1.I don’t know. We need more platonic soulmate fics for these two.
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 7
Kudos: 28





	It’s not always romantic, Dean.

Dad’s mark was on his chest, just below the collarbone on the right side. It was a line drawing of a simple crown. Sam didn’t know what it meant, but the way John clammed up if he asked about it was familiar enough that Sam knew it had to be for Mom.  
Dean’s mark was on the inside of his left arm, just above his elbow. Dean’s mark was a freakin’ crest: a shield with a heart crossed with a knife and a gun. If Sam asked about it, Dean always brushed him off. If Dad heard him ask, he would remind them that soulmates were a liability, something the monsters would use to hurt them. Dad always said that the best thing they could do for a soulmate was get as far away from her as possible. Dean always pulled a face when he said that.  
When Sam fell in love for the first time, he knew that if by some chance they were soulmates, he wouldn’t be the one to bear the mark. There was too much he had to hide, too much of himself he could never give to her. When they met, her skin was flawless and his bore the scars of a lifetime of hunting. When she died, neither of them had a soulmate mark.  
Somehow, the thought that he would never know whether or not she was his soulmate barely registered in the chaos of other emotions swirling and overwhelming him for the weeks after the fire.

xx

He didn’t really think about soulmates until the end of the wendigo hunt.  
“Ben showed me he got marks from rescuing his siblings.” Sam commented as Dean directed the Impala away from the ranger station and the three people they’d rescued.  
“Marks? Like scars?”  
“No. Like soulmate marks. The three of them are soulmates.”  
Dean pulled a face. “Eew!”  
“What? Why is that...?”  
“Dude! They’re siblings. They reminded me of us, and now you’re saying they’re soulmates?” He spit the word like it was something disgusting.  
“You do know soulmates can be platonic, right?”  
“And that’s supposed to make it somehow ok?” Dean raised his eyebrows in disbelief.  
Sam sighed. “Dean, ‘platonic’ means ‘not romantic.’ Just because chick flicks always make it about falling in love and happily-ever-after doesn’t mean that’s what happens in real life. A couple of my friends at Stanford had friends or relatives with platonic soulmates. It’s uncommon but not weird or impossible.”  
Dean scratched his arm where his mark sat, but didn’t say anything.  
“You ever going to tell me about it?”  
“No.”  
“Do you even know who it is?”  
“No.” It wasn’t really an answer. It was a ‘drop it because I’m not talking about it.’  
Sam shook his head but didn’t push.

{ ]

Dean would have been killed by the scarecrow/pagan god. If Sam hadn’t come back, let go of trying to get to Dad, his big brother would be dead. If Dean had come with him in the first place, it wouldn’t have mattered. If he hadn’t left ... it was impossible to say.  
The thoughts had been chasing themselves around his head as they drove to the motel, and while Dean took the first shower. When it was Sam’s turn, he caught a his reflection in the mirror and his thoughts stalled.  
In the center of his chest was a black line drawing: a heart with a shield in the middle, and at the center, a dagger crossed with a pistol.  
He stared at the shape as he brought a hand up to hesitantly run a finger over the lines. It was smooth, like part of the skin, not raised like a tattoo. Sam had seen enough soulmate marks to know what this was. The events of the last few days didn’t leave many options of who it was for. The similarities to Dean’s mark didn’t escape him, either.  
Which suddenly made sense. The shape mark was supposedly a reflection of the person’s role in the relationship. Dean was his big brother. He thought it was his job to protect and care for Sam. The heart on Sam’s mark was bigger than the shield.  
He stopped himself with a head shake and made himself take a shower already. He could dwell on it later. He had to decide whether to tell Dean about it. He had to figure out whether Dean knew.

|}

Only a few days after Sam’s mark appeared, Dean got electrocuted on a hunt and all Sam could think about was saving his brother. He barely thought about, barely remembered that his big brother was probably his soulmate.  
It was several weeks, maybe a couple months, before it came up.  
It was after a hunt. The poltergeist had thrown Sam into a glass-front China cabinet. Their normal layers of clothing protected most of his body, but his face and hands were covered in cuts and he had a couple gashes across his chest. Dean saw the mark as soon as Sam pulled his shirt off in the motel room. He gritted his teeth and pointedly didn’t look at it while he cleaned and bandaged the younger man’s wounds. Then he stood and left without a word.  
Sam flopped back on the bed. If Dean had his way, they would never talk about this: Sam would stay to write up notes on the hunt, Dean would get drunk and maybe find a girl for the night, and in the morning, Sam would try to bring it up, Dean would firmly tell him to drop it, and they would move on with this elephant living in the Impala with them.  
After a few minutes staring at the ceiling, Sam sighed. This was gonna suck, but he had to do it. He pushed himself up and finger combed his hair before heading out.

<8

It wasn’t hard to find the bar where Dean was. It was a weeknight and there weren’t many options. Sam found his brother slumped at a table with his back to the room, staring listlessly at the drink in front of him.  
Sam settled across from Dean and for a minute just studied his brother.  
“So how drunk are you?”  
Dean shrugged. “I don’t really want to talk right now.”  
“That’s ok. I’m only asking you to listen. And I promise to make it as un-chick-flick-y as possible.”  
Dean shifted his stare to the bar. “Whatever.”  
That was the best Sam could hope for, so he took a breath and started. “Jessica had an aunt, kinda two aunts but only one of them was actually her aunt. They were best friends, you know? Always together, high school, college, marriage, kids, inseparable. Then the best friend got sick. Turned out she needed a kidney transplant. And Jess’s aunt happened to match. So she donated a kidney to her best friend. After the surgery, they found the word “hope” right above where they’d cut her open. Turns out, the best friends were also soulmates. Married with kids, inseparable, straight, soulmates.”  
Dean shifted but didn’t say anything.  
“There was a kid on my floor my first year at Stanford. He came home from Christmas break with this story about sledding with his baby sister—and she was like ten or fifteen years younger than him—and they almost crashed, but he, like, tackled her, and when they got home he found a horse on his ribs.” Sam chuckled remembering. “He said his sister insisted it was a My Little Pony.”  
Dean cracked a small smile and glanced at Sam.  
Sam gave him a small smile back, but took a breath before continuing. “Dean, you’re my brother, probably my best friend. And I’m pretty sure we’re both mostly straight, or at least technically straight.” Yeah. That was not going to be part of this conversation. “I don’t want anything to change between us. But my mark appeared when I decided you were more important than my need to get revenge on the thing that killed Jessica. And I’m betting yours showed up one of the times you gave me the last bowl of Lucky Charms and I was too young to understand what you were doing. And I don't want to pretend we both don’t know that.”  
Sam finished and waited.  
Dean took a deep breath and scrubbed his hand over his face. “It was longer ago than that.”  
“It was?”  
The older brother sighed and his eyes fell to his arm, where the mark was currently hiding under his sleeve. “Yeah. I don’t remember exactly. It took me a while to figure out, but I think I got it when I carried you out of the house that night.”  
Sam could only stare. Of course it would be then. That was the moment Dean quit being a kid and became Sam’s big brother.  
“Does Dad know?”  
“I don’t know. We never talked about it. He’s always said a soulmate was a liability, someone else to get killed if you messed up.”  
Sam nodded.  
“You know he’ll never accept this.”  
“I know. I figure what he doesn’t know can’t hurt him.”  
Dean snorted. “So we don't tell him?”  
“I don’t care if we never tell anybody. As long as you know, and you know that I know, I’m good with that.”  
Dean was silent, picking at his beer bottle.  
Sam stood and clapped a hand on his shoulder. “I’m going back to the motel. I’ll see you later.”

<3

The next morning, Sam shook Dean awake at 10:30 so they could get on the road.  
“Dude, what time did you get back last night?”  
Dean groaned. “Like 5? Found this cute brunette. Told her my soulmate refuses to have sex with me.”  
Sam snorted. “Did you really?”  
“Nah. Thought about it though. I might try it out at some point.”  
“Go for it. I only want to know if it ends with beer on your face, though.”  
Dean grunted.  
Sam dropped a half-full duffle on top of him. “Get up. I’m not packing your crap and I’m not carrying you out to the car.”  
Sam grabbed the bags he’d already packed and took them outside to the Impala. When he got back, he was relieved to find Dean digging through the clean(er) clothes in his duffle for something to wear.  
“You know, I thought about what you said. And I think there is something I’d like to change, and I’m thinking you’ll agree with me.”  
“Ok?” Sam asked cautiously.  
“Soulmates are supposed to be like stuck together, right? Two halves of a whole or whatever?”  
“Not exactly. A lot of people see it that way, but I think it’s more like synergy: we’re complete on our own but we complement each other in a way no one else could.” Something in Dean’s expression made him scramble for an analogy. “We’re like bread and apples. They’re great on their own, but together you get pie.”  
“Dude, that’s not how you make pie.”  
Sam rolled his eyes. “It’s an analogy. What about bacon and a cheeseburger? You don’t always get them together but they’re better that way.”  
“Am I the cheese burger or the bacon? Actually, don’t answer that. The point is, we’re like bound together. We’re sticking together, right?”  
“Yeah. I think so. I never wanted to leave you in the first place. Dad was the one who made it a big thing.”  
“I know. But that’s kinda what I’m getting at: I don’t want to fight with you. I watched you and Dad for years and I don't want that to become us. I don’t want you to get out and hitchhike because we disagree on something. You know? I like having you with me. I like it when we get along.”  
Sam fought a smile at the request. “You realize we’ll have to have more chick-flick moments in that case? Like actually talking about what’s bugging us instead of ignoring it ‘til one of us blows up?”  
Dean pulled a face. “Do we have to?”  
“Yeah. It’s called communication. We talk, we listen, we trust each other with more than just our backs. We fix things before they turn into Alien Vs Predator.”  
“Batman Vs Superman is a better rivalry. And they manage to work together sometimes.”  
“You’re just saying that so you can be Batman.”  
Dean gave him a ‘no, duh’ look. “I am Batman.”  
“Whatever. It doesn’t change my point. If we want to stop fighting, we need to work on telling each other when something’s wrong and why.”  
Dean moved around him to get his shoes. “I’ll try, but you realize it’s my job to take care of you?”  
“And what do you think my job is?”  
Dean looked up at him, an expression of absolute confusion on his face.  
Sam waited a minute before shaking his head and going to the door. “I’ll let you think about that. I’m going to the car.”  
“Hey, Sam?”  
He stopped and looked back at his brother.  
“You mind driving for an hour so I can get some more sleep.”  
Sam smiled. “Sure.”  
Not everything was perfect. Dean still had things to get through. Sam would bet the older Winchester would need a while before he could mention that they were soulmates without choking. And they would both have to work on getting along, but they were brothers. And soulmates. They’d be ok eventually.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N1  
> Lore that didn’t fit:  
> Everyone has a soulmate, but you only get a mark when you “give yourself to your soulmate.” Once in a while, sex or marriage works, but usually it takes some kind of sacrifice. Only about half of pairs ever find out they’re soulmates, and usually only one of the partners gets a mark.  
> A/N2  
> Insignificant HC that’s hinted at here:  
> Sam is some flavor of asexual; Dean is aromantic.


End file.
